AASHTO Journal - AASHTOWare Unveils Pavement 3.0 Software

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials recently issued AASHTOWare Pavement ME Design 3.0, the latest version of its core pavement design software platform.

[Above image by AASHTO]

AASHTOWare – which offers a suite of transportation software products delivered through a collaborative business model with state departments of transportation across the country – upgraded its pavement design package to make it easier to use as well as offer improve design specification protections.

AASHTOWare Pavement ME Design is a software tool designed to support the day-to-day operations of public and private pavement design engineers.

It calculates pavement responses (such as stresses, strains, and deflections) based on traffic, climate, and materials parameters to predict the progression of key pavement distresses and smoothness loss over time for asphalt concrete and Portland cement concrete pavements.

“What makes Pavement 3.0 so special is that it is a web-based version,” explained Keith Platte, director of AASHTOWare.

“Pavement 3.0 is a cloud-based software package, meaning that if you have a license to use the software, you can visit our website and log in to use it. AASHTOWare Pavement ME Design no longer has to be installed on a state DOT server and managed by a state DOT’s information technology department,” he said. “This makes it far simpler for engineers to gain access.”

Another key improvement to the Pavement 3.0 package concerns user permission features, which govern access to critical design specification data within the software. Those permission features “lock down” pavement design parameters – which can often run into the hundreds of packages – eliminating the potential for mistakes.

Pavement 3.0 now also features direct integration with Federal Highway Administration climate data. AASHTOWare entered into an agreement with the FHWA that allows Pavement 3.0 to tap directly into its climate information database.

That automatically provides users – based on longitude and latitude inputs – with regional climate data affecting pavement design specifications, alleviating the need for manual entry of such climate-based information. That removes the chance for human computational errors as well as the need to visit multiple external websites to obtain specific climate data.

“Overall, we’ve made Pavement 3.0 easier to use for both new and experienced engineers,” Platte said. “It is now both a simpler and more powerful pavement material design tool.”